1. Technical Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to handheld electronic devices and, more particularly, to a method of managing notifications provided by an Application Programming Interface (API) on a handheld electronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Numerous types of handheld electronic devices are known. Examples of handheld electronic devices include, for instance, personal data assistants (PDAs), handheld computers, two-way pagers, cellular telephones, and the like. Many handheld electronic devices also feature a wireless communication capability, although many such handheld electronic devices are stand-alone devices that are functional without communication with other devices.
Some handheld electronic devices that are sold with certain software resident thereon and are configured to allow additional software developed by third parties to be installed and executed on the electronic handheld device. In order to facilitate the use of such third-party software, the manufacturer of the device may sell the device with original software that is sufficiently versatile to enable cooperation between the original software and third-party software. Such third-party software may be provided on the device when originally provided to a consumer, or may be added after purchase. While such handheld electronic devices and software have been generally effective for their intended purposes, such handheld electronic devices have not been without limitation.
For instance, the original software provided by a manufacturer may be configured to be so versatile as to be somewhat burdensome to use. For example, the original software may provide a routine such as an Application Programming Interface (API) that third-party software can employ to receive notifications in response to certain events on the handheld electronic device. Due to the intended versatility of the original software, the original software may provide many more notifications than are needed or are usable by the third-party software. The processing of so many unnecessary notifications undesirably adds processing overhead and consumes both processing and power resources. Moreover, despite their versatility, such APIs may still provide fewer than all of the functions that might be desirable for use with certain third-party software. For instance, the API may provide certain notifications, but such notifications may provide less than all of the data that would be desirable for proper operation of the third-party software.
Similar numerals refer to similar parts throughout the specification.